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The Best Mobile Apps for Baseball Season

All the late-inning heroics, minus rain delays and nosebleed seats

As awesome as Cracker Jack and home-field hot dogs are, taking yourself out to the old ballgame is so 20thcentury. Why suffer through the crowds when you can bring the ballgame to you?

No matter which side of the Red Sox/Yankee rivalry you fall on, the best mobile apps for baseball will keep you on top of your game around the clock. You bring the root, root rooting for the home team and the $9 beer, and they'll take care of the rest.

If other apps are sunflower seed-spitting utility players, MLB At Bat is the steroid-shooting powerhouse that crushes balls and makes opposing pitchers weep. This home run hitter offers a pitch tracker, live radio broadcasts, extensive post-game highlight reels, in-progress video look-ins of key plays, and more stats, scores and all-around info than you can shake some world-famous Gilroy Garlic Fries at.

Even better, MLB At Bat broadcasts a free, live HD video feed of one game per day, while MLB.TV subscribers($24.99/mo.) can watch any game live through MLB At Bat; and they get the app for free to boot. If you have to settle on one baseball app, MLB At Bat is the All-Star to pick… if you can afford its big league price tag.

Various Fantasy Baseball Apps (iOS and Android, free)

All fantasy baseball apps offer up player scores as well as the ability to endlessly tinker with your team during fits of George Steinbrenner-esque fancy, but the specific app you'll need depends on the league you're signed up with. Fortunately, each of the big dawgs – Yahoo Fantasy Baseball, ESPN Fantasy Baseball, CBS Fantasy Baseball and Fox Fantasy Baseball – stocks their bullpens with free apps for both Apple and Android devices.

In addition to live box scores (yawn), FanGraphs dishes out lifetime stats for every player who's swung a bat since 1974, complete with minor league performance and salary numbers. What, that's not deep enough? How about shifting probability-based graphs that display how likely a team is to win at any given time during any given game, based on up-to-the-minute plays and events? Careful, Poindexter – your inner stat geek is showing.

Who needs talent scouts when you have EvriThing Baseball? This app pulls in baseball news from thousands of different online sources and sorts the massive feed into over 30 different sub-channels, including one for each MLB team. Bust out the smelling salts 'cause this'll make MLB lovers' heads spin.

"Get lost in the game" is a classic sports metaphor, but actually getting lost at the game – or on the way to the game – flat out sucks. Ballpark Envi keeps you on the proverbial base path by slapping beautiful photos of all the major league stadiums into your pocket, complete with seating charts and maps-based location information.

Official Rules of Baseball (Android, free)

Is the umpire really, truly blind or are you just ignorant about the minutia of baseball's intricate rules? Check with this free app before you start spluttering peanuts over a supposed bungling of the infield fly rule.

No matter which of the best baseball mobile apps make it into your e-lineup, be sure to protect your lead (and your personal data) with a strong mobile security app – because all it takes is one malware-carrying curveball to turn your tablet into a tool of the zombie horde.